I’ve been playing a lot of Guild Wars 2 lately instead of writing. Because I apparently have no soul. But! I will say it has been quite the adventure. Some friends finally got the game and we made a guild. There are many lulz to be had. If you want to see just how many, and what exactly I’ve been up to lately,
I know you’re jealous and want to be friends with us.
And procrastination is a son of a bitch, let me tell you.
Maybe the problem is that I’m trying to do too much at once – rewrite Of the Arbour, write Abomination, edit Changeling and The Time Between, edit Purity, write When Gods Descend – or maybe it’s because the STEAM SUMMER SALE just started and I’m a sick human being.
In one day, I managed to buy everything on my wish list: Mass Effect 1 and 2, and the Sims 3 Seasons and University expansions. Mass Effect and the Sims have been dominating my life for the past week; I bought them last Saturday.
That being said, ME is a really good source of inspiration, if only for When Gods Descend (which, by the way, if I forgot to mention, is the working title of the sci-fi story I started).
Writers, though, generally speaking, are an anxious bunch riddled with self-doubt and pitiful isolation. We have a tendency to get caught up in our own worlds and this has a tendency to shut down our brains for a while. Hence, writer’s block. I don’t necessarily have that at the moment – I technically know where I want everything to go – but I’m so distracted by other things I’m having a hard time getting there.
I think my best option would be to cut myself some slack and only focus on one project at a time for a while. Picking one will be hard (probably Abomination, though) and just ignoring all else but that for the time being. Jumping around between so many is getting impossible.
Writer problems, amirite?
Does anybody else have this problem? It’s always so tempting to start something new, and so easy to bail partway through when life gets in the way.
Guys! Guys! I got another award! And I’m being humble about it!
On Windy Days awarded me with the Inspiring Blogger Award! I’m flattered and totally deserve it and everything.
The rules!
* Display the award logo on your blog Boom, done!
* Link back to the person who nominated you Good for me!
* State seven things about yourself
* Nominate 15 other bloggers for this award and link to them
* Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award’s requirements
Seven facts!
I haven’t listed fifteen, because I am UNCONVENTIONAL.
Thanks!
I recently downloaded from Steam the lovable old game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, and installed the Restored Content mod that returned to the game content that the developers had to cut prior to the rushed release date. I love this game to bits, due to playing it all the time as a child, and I was fascinated to see what restored content I could fiddle with.
I had always known about the sub-level of the Telos military base, the one with the locked door that you can never enter. Cut content. I always knew it was the door to the HK manufacturing plant that G0-T0 took over after Revan abandoned it. So I was super excited once HK-47 initiated the quest to find out where the HK-50 droids were coming from so he could hunt them down and kill them. Continue reading
I think I’ve decided that I’m going to self-publish Changeling as an ebook. It’s finished, now that I’ve cut out just under 20 000 words, leaving it around 175 000, and it would help build my portfolio, especially once I publish Purity. As I still mean to publish OtArb the traditional way, it will look good on cover letters and queries to have something published, even if it is by my onesie.
So! This means edits!
One good thing about having the Sims, other than mindless, soul-eating entertainment, is the ability to make original characters and play around with them in a setting outside of their stories. I do this quiet frequently, and have the most fun with it – I also get a lot of character ideas from interactions they make in the Sims. For example, when I created Aisling and Alistair from Changeling in the Sims, I got ideas for their future and more characters.
When I had the Sims 2, I made a replica of Caitlyn’s house and made her and Fane. But now that I have the Sims 3, I changed it up a bit. Caitlyn, I’ve made before. I know my way around her head pretty well. So instead, I made Fane and Verity, his long ago love from 1809.
I adore Verity. Let’s just make that clear early on. She’s a hotheaded, seventeen year old uber-devout Catholic hellbent on serving God and her Pope, but she’s also sweet as sugar. She changed Fane’s mind on religion and faith and the differences of them, and their relationship was built on mutual respect and admiration, and was purely wholesome.
It was fun making her in the Sims. Especially because they have a hotheaded option.
Stuffed into an alternate reality where they were able to stay together, Fane launched to the top of the political career while Verity worked first as a businesswoman, then as a teacher. It was the most fun building a life for them.
So here’s an idea of what Fane and Verity look like! (Keep in mind, in my head Fane is a lot skinnier and pointier, due to the being dead thing.)
The Elder Scrolls Online is hosting a limerick contest, but alas, only US and EU citizens can enter. Why the hate for Canadians? I don’t know. I only discovered this after my coworker and I spent a good long time thinking up a half-decent limerick. In other news, limericks are really hard to write.
Thanks to playing a whole lot of Saints Row the Third (and maybe a little to do with having seen the Dark Knight Rises three times already), I have an overwhelming urge to write a story involving superheroes. I have a basic plot sketched out – it would be light-hearted, humourous, while poking fun at superhero stereotypes. I was going to set it in 1950s New York – because everything bad happens to New York – but as I know nothing about New York, it’s being set in Vancouver instead.
The main character, Clara Butler, is a twenty-something woman who cooks and cleans the house of a wealthy entrepreneur, and secretly has super strength and can shoot blasts of energy. Donning a costume, she goes out and performs vigilante justice. She can’t fly and can’t afford a nice car, so she has to wait through traffic in order to get to the heists and she’s a woman, so she’s an awful driver. However, stealing all the credit for her work is another costumed hero, this one a man who ends up being praised by the public and police, because he’s always there when the cops show, after Clara has left. She’s bitter, and goes about trying to stop him from stealing her thunder. Plus some other stuff, but we’ll keep that on the DL in case I actually finish this WIP.
So my issue is this: How does one name superheroes without sounding too hokey? It’s got to have some degree of ridiculousness, because I do intend to mock stereotypical heroes, and it’s just not a good superhero without a dumb name.
Does anyone have any thoughts on names? I’m currently empty-handed, and would love to hear whatever insane suggestions you all can come up with.
I have this thing we shall call writer’s block, and it is crippling me. For the past few weeks, I’ve been entirely incapable of writing anything – Changeling, which usually has a plethora of ideas bubbling about, has become stagnant; Of the Kingdoms, while at an interesting yet early part that kickstarts the plot, is doing little to keep me going. I’m writing little bits here and there, but nothing of any substance.
As for the Purity rewrite, I’m around 50 000 words in, and the main plots are all underway, but due to a technical issue, I have almost zero desire to write any more. More on that shortly.
I think part of this can be blamed on the summer sale on Steam. Thanks to glorious 50-75% off sales on most of their titles, I finally got the pets expansion to Sims 3, as well as the GOTY Morrowind. I have Morrowind for xbox, but I can’t play it, due to the horrible graphical and engine-related deficiencies in a game ten years old. So while they were installing, I found a Morrowind graphics and sounds overhaul package, and modded it in. So Morrowind looks great, and even though the engine is still difficult to play, I’ve worked around it and got into a sort of pattern. It helps that I play as a mage, so it’s easier to actually hit enemies and level.
Then, just yesterday, my brother pointed out that Saints Row the Third and all expansions etc, is on sale for $13. Regular $104. 87% off. How could I not, after how much I enjoyed Saints Row 2? That’s still downloading now, because I accidentally paused it overnight.
So with virtual kitties and horsies and puppies and Ashlanders and Caius and the Nerevarine, it seems to make sense that I haven’t been writing. It’s painful, but still.
Does anyone have any suggestions for overcoming writer’s block? I want to write, but I’ve stalled. Short of turning off my internet so I can’t get distracted by comics, social media, and video games (because, as it turns out, I can’t survive without constant access to the interwebz), is there anything anyone can suggest?
On a side note, one of my many t-shirts that I order online has come today: Vader vs Hitler from Epic Rap Battles of History. The others (Rub Some Bacon On It, Enchantment, Adept, and Mother of Dragons) are on their way still. Soon, hopefully!
Also, I’m going to do a review sort of of one of my favourite webcomics, Blue Milk Special (for that matter, maybe of my other favourite, Unsounded), and I feel like I had some other sort of post planned, but if I forgot it, must not be that important.
Oh, and the issue with Purity. When I went to write more the other day, I clicked on an past scene (as I’m writing it in Scrivener, rather than my usual lover, MS Word, and Scrivener separates each individual scene) and for whatever reason, Scrivener didn’t like that. I only clicked on it, for Heaven’s sake, and some sort of message popped up. It didn’t seem particularly aggressive or notable, and my only option was to click OK.
So I did, and promptly lost that ENTIRE SCENE. With NO way of getting it back other than rewriting it. So I’m pissed. I’m glad I haven’t actually bought Scrivener, because that’s just silly. I think I’ll stick with my baby, Word, from now on.
But yes. Help me with my writer’s block! Any suggestion is a good one at this point. I’m desperate, here.
JP Marshman 